


call me any, anytime

by gsparkle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Phone Calls & Telephones, Pizza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 13:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17899250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: The thing is, nobody has a landline anymore, which means that the only calls Natasha gets at home are from the pharmacy, the library, or credit card scammers--and Clint, local hangover-haver, who keeps mixing up her phone number with that of the neighborhood pizza place.





	call me any, anytime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiss_me_cassie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiss_me_cassie/gifts).



> **be_compromised 2019 Valentine's prompt:** ‘i’m rly hungover and i rly rly need some takeout right now but oh god i called the wrong number and your voice is rly attractive do you wanna come over with a pizza’ au
> 
> I wrote this while listening to "Carry Out" by Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, like, on loop; however, the title is from "Call Me" by Blondie :)

The thing is, nobody has a landline anymore, which means that the only calls Natasha gets at home are from the pharmacy, the library, or credit card scammers. As such, when she comes home from her Saturday morning workout and hears her phone ringing through the door, she’s in no hurry to answer. It’s only on the third ring, when the caller ID robotically butchers, “Call from Bedford Stuyvesant,” that she gets interested enough to answer the phone.

When she answers, the voice at the other end says, “Yeah, can I get an extra large pepperoni and peppers?”

“Sir, I think--”

“And breadsticks,” the guy goes on. He sounds terrible, like microwaved death; everything about his wincing voice screams _hangover_. “Oh, and can I get some marinara sauce with that? Also, do you deliver aspirin?”

Truly, he sounds pathetic. “I think you have the wrong number,” says Natasha, trying not to laugh. “Sorry.”

“Shit,” the guy says, with a lot more vehemence than she expects from someone half-dead. “This isn’t Shield Pizza?”

Understanding dawns: Natasha orders from the same place, just around the corner, and their number isn’t so different from hers. “They’re 555-1616,” Natasha explains. “This is 555-6161.”

“Fuck,” the guy says after a long pause. “Sorry about that,” and then the line clicks off, leaving Natasha to stare bemusedly at her phone until Maria texts her about a cute one-eyed dog in the neighborhood and she forgets the whole thing.

 

Until he calls again two weeks later. And then again, two weeks after that. And again. And _again._ “Dude,” Natasha finally says the sixth time it happens. “Why don’t you just save the number in your phone?”

“Huh,” says the guy, surprise apparently breaking through the fog of his hangover. “Good idea.” He hangs up and Natasha thinks she might, weirdly, miss these odd exchanges. She doesn’t know his name, but his voice is nice, deep and sleep-rumpled, and he’s always polite.

So she’s not all that upset when the phone rings again two weeks later. “If you’re going to do this every week,” Natasha says, glad he can’t see her exasperated grin, “I should at least know your name.”

“Clint,” the guy says, sheepish. “And it’s not _every_ week.”

“Every other,” Natasha concedes; and then, feeling fully justified to be nosy, all things considered: “But _why_ are you hungover every other Saturday?”

Clint explains: “So my friend has a huge crush on the bartender at the Utopian, and every pay day she goes down there and buys a ton of drinks in, like, a really bad attempt at flirting? And, like, I mean… I can’t just let all those drinks go to waste, y’know?”

Natasha squints at her phone for a few seconds, partially because the Utopian is only a few blocks away. “you know that alcohol doesn’t… go bad, right?” she finally says, finding herself fully unable to come up with anything else to say in response.

“I know,” Clint sighs. She doesn’t know what he looks like, but can still imagine an arm over a face, a classic pose of hungover distress. “But she needs a wingman. I’m just trying to be a good friend.”

“Well,” Natasha says, “in that case, I’ll talk to you again in two weeks, then. Unless your friend finally gets lucky.”

“Unlikely,” Clint groans, and Natasha tries not to smile as she signs off.

 

It’s just--there’s a point where it gets _too_ late to tell her friends about it. Like, the conversation would begin, _hey, funny story, this guy keeps calling me trying to order pizza and also he sounds increasingly sexy the more often I talk to him_ , and Pepper will say _how sexy is increasingly sexy_ , and then Maria will say _more often_ in that question-mark-less-question voice she has, and Jess will say _just how long has this been going on_ , and Natasha will have to leave, or die, or something.

Because she can’t tell her friends that this has been going on for the better part of six months now. That he doesn’t even try to order anymore, just says, “Oh, hey, Nat, sorry,” asks about her week, gives her the update on Kate’s continued inability to make a move on America; that she even _knows_ the names of these peripheral people who are unknowingly contributing to the stupidest crush she’s ever had. They absolutely _cannot_ know that sometimes she considers what it might be like to wake up next to a man she has never even met, that she wants to meet him even though _literally_ all she knows about him is that he regularly drinks just a bit too much and can’t be bothered to save a phone number in his phone, that she has built an embarrassingly elaborate fantasy around this person based on little more than a gorgeous voice and a repeating mistake. And there’s no way in hell she’ll ever admit that she’s laid in bed more than one Friday night, thinking about walking down to the Utopian and maybe finding America and somehow from there identifying Kate and therefore Clint (though the plan kind of falls apart here because what in the world would she even say, how could that kind of introduction _possibly_ go well).

It’s better, she thinks, to just keep it to herself. And so it’s a problem when Maria follows her home one day after the gym to hang out, and drapes herself across the couch to allegedly hate-watch reruns of _The Bachelor_. “I’m not moving,” Maria declares, misinterpreting the reason for Natasha hovering in the kitchen. “You can sit on the floor.”

Natasha crosses her arms. “It’s not that,” she says, trying not to say anything, and then not needing to because the phone rings. She snatches it up. “Hello? Oh, Clint, hi--” Without meaning to, she smiles into the receiver, her shoulders softening as she tucks the phone under her chin to listen to the latest episode of Kate drama. He doesn’t sound nearly as miserable as he usually does, his voice so full of laughter as he describes Kate trying to show off while playing darts that Natasha laughs, too, big and bright.

“Who are you _talking_ to?” asks Maria, suddenly right behind her. She tries to grab the phone because, underneath it all, Maria and Natasha are still the same miserable boarding school roommates they were when they met at ten years old. In the ensuing scuffle, she manages to repeat her question into the speaker before Natasha yanks the phone from her hands, breathlessly says, “ _I’m-so-sorry-bye_ ” into the phone before hanging it up so sharply it nearly falls back off the hook. Maria stares her down, hands on hips. “Who was _that_?”

“Wrong number,” Natasha says, impressed by her own levels of cool.

“Romanoff,” Maria sighs, equally unimpressed, “Do _not_ make me pull that man’s phone number off your caller ID.” She would, too. Natasha sighs, leaves the kitchen, and sprawls over the couch, figuring she might as well be comfortable for her confession.

 

Natasha does not have subtle friends, which is why they’re at the Utopian two weeks later, and why she’s been harangued into her tightest jeans and lowest cut shirt under her favorite motorcycle jacket. “Which one is he?” Pepper whispers loudly, as if there is any need to be secret in a crowded Friday night bar.

“I don’t know,” Natasha says, feeling deeply stupid. “I’m getting a drink.” She peels away from the group before they can start speculating on which of the various male patrons is Clint, although even as she moves away she can see Jess pointing at someone with truly atrocious facial hair. _Nope_ , Natasha thinks, turning her attention to the bar. Her plan for this evening is to provide absolutely no help in identifying Clint until her friends either give up or become distractably drunk. This is step one: “Can I get two rounds of shots, vodka?” she asks the bartender, who nods and takes her card to start the tab.

“Natasha, huh?” says the bartender, handing the card back. She’s got a curling mass of black hair and warm brown skin, arms dotted with star tattoos in various sizes, and Natasha recognizes her from Clint’s descriptions as America. _Shit_ , because now, automatically, her eyes scan her vicinity for anyone who could be Kate, even though Clint’s only descriptors for her have been _an infant_ and _bossy_ and _looks like one of those Gossip Girls_. And while she considers this, America looks across her shoulder and calls, “Hey, princess!”

 _Me?_ Natasha thinks, half-turning; but no, there’s a girl squeezing her way through the crowd, maybe 22, definitely bossy, definitely a Gossip Girl. “What’s up?” she says, and Natasha positively IDs her as Kate from the way she looks up at America like she hung the moon. America tips her chin in Natasha’s direction, and Kate’s round blue gaze swings to Natasha, and Natasha wishes very much that her vodka shots would hurry up. “ _Oh_ ,” Kate says.

“ _Any_ way,” Natasha says, pushing back from the bar. “My friends and I will just be over there, if someone could deliver those? Thanks.” But she only gets a few steps before a small hand latches around her wrist.

“You _are_ her, aren’t you?” says Kate. “Natasha? The one Clint keeps definitely not accidentally calling?”

“No,” Natasha lies, then pauses, then turns to Kate. “ _Not_ accidentally?”

Kate smirks; Natasha scowls. “He’s playing darts,” she says, pointing to--to--to the _literal_ most attractive man Natasha has ever seen, tall and rangy and the good kind of dirty blond, staring down the dartboard with an intensity that is arrestingly hot. “ _Go_ ,” Kate says with a not so gentle push, and Natasha can’t even find it in her to be annoyed.

The crowds part before her, somehow; she’s behind him in what feels like seconds. “Um,” she says, tapping his shoulder. “Clint?”

“Katie?” he says, turning around, and _oh god_ he’s even hotter up close, _oh god_ his smile feels like the best sort of hangover. “Hi?” he says, eyes darkening. “Do I know you? I feel like I _definitely_ should.”

“I’m,” Natasha says, melting from the inside out. “I’m Natasha. From, uh, the phone?” _Jesus._ “I thought I’d try to save you the hangover tonight.”

“Tired of my phone calls?” he says, wariness creeping into his tone.

Natasha shakes her head and grins. “Tired of not having a face to put with a name,” she says. Clint’s smile widens when she steps closer into his space, well aware that Kate and America and probably all of her friends by now are watching. “Do you wanna get out of here?” she asks. “I’ve heard of this place, Shield Pizza? Supposed to be good. This guy won’t stop calling to tell me about it.”

“You’ll be shocked to learn this,” Clint says, throwing his last darts before taking her arm and wheeling them for the door, “but I _love_ pizza.”


End file.
